Beaters Rule! The 24 Hours of LeMons

We take on the world in a $500 Oldsmobile.

First off, for those of you who suffer through the Sport section of this magazine, this is not yet another fawning account by a journalist embedded in a multimillion-dollar team competing at that famous 24-hour race at the Circuit de La Sarthe in France. That's the 24 Hours of Le Mans. This is the 24 Hours of LeMons held at Altamont Motorsports Park in Tracy, California. We're talking lemon (noun): something defective or disappointing, especially a car that does not run properly.

Like the Gallic race it seeks to mock, the 24 Hours of LeMons is an endurance race for cars. Unlike the other race, this one is for cars that cost $500 or less, the notion being that when a car sinks to 500 bucks, it's a lemon. (We'd say beaters, but 24 Hours of Beaters sounds like it might draw onanists, and we already have enough of those in this office.)

Credit for this amusing idea goes to automotive journalist Jay Lamm. When Lamm got up his nerve to go looking for a racing venue, "most tracks laughed at the idea. Altamont laughed, but they called back."

Left: Plagued by high engine temperatures early on, the $500 Olds soars sorta majestically over a crest.Right: Stripped interior bears little resemblance to the original leather-lined cocoon. We did have a Mitsu Evo seat, two fire extinguishers, and A/C that wouldnt shut off.

This event also takes 24 hours, but just 13 hours of it is racing—from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Saturday and from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday. The car that completes the most laps wins. Clearly, it's a ruse to torture cars at the end of their lives to the delight of all. Who could resist?

The event ensures destruction. For one, teams vote for a most-reviled entry, the "People's Curse," and for their favorite, the "People's Choice." Win the first category and get your car destroyed. The favorite gets a $1000 prize, paid out in nickels.

So, what to enter? We kicked around the boffo idea of a Chevy Chevette, painted like the Le Mans class-winning Corvette C6.R—Vette wins Le Mans, Vette wins LeMons. The problem is that so few of the little turds survived into the 21st century that they now have achieved the same sick collector status as clown paintings by John Wayne Gacy. We nearly snagged one for $500 on eBay, but we were outbid by 10 bucks.

The “Best Dressed” award for car and team goes to the “Audi Motorsport” group led by Sports Car International editor-in chief Eric Gustafson. With matching coveralls, a rattle-can paint job mimicking Audi’s Le Mans–winning R10, and a yellow RS 4 parked in their pit, it almost looked as if Audi were after the prestigious racing title at Altamont. Well, not really. More like “not at all.” The painted car wasn’t even an Audi, but they came pretty close with a ’77 VW Rabbit diesel.

To prep the car for the track, the socalled Audi Motorsport team swapped in the “donated” suspension from an ’84 GTI. During qualifying, the Rabbit blew the right-rear brake line avoiding a baby carriage. Although the VW missed the start of the race, the problem was fixed with a screw in the broken line and only three functioning brakes for the rest of the race. Isn’t that how Audi dealt with brake problems at Le Mans? The 48-hp diesel chugged through the race mostly problem-free, overcoming a broken clutch cable early Sunday morning. In the waning hours, the Rabbit succumbed to air in the fuel lines and sat out the final laps, ultimately finishing 19th. —Jared Gall

We dealt with this task the same way we deal with deadlines. Why do something intelligent in advance when you can wait until the last minute and do something truly idiotic? With only four weeks until the race, an experienced 1995 Oldsmobile Aurora with 175,315 miles and crash damage turned up on eBay.

Still high from my victory in an Olds in the artfully crafted Battle of the Diesel Beaters; [C/D, April 2006], I felt a need to remain loyal to that international symbol of automotive competence. The '95 Aurora was up the road in Pontiac, Michigan, where we found that the suspension of the Copper Mist (purple brown) Aurora clunked like a Tijuana taxi (bad control-arm bushing), but the engine ran and the tranny still shifted.

Recall that the Aurora was designed to reverse the downward spiral of Oldsmobile. Built on the rigid G-platform, the Aurora had GM's most modern powertrain, a 250-hp, 4.0-liter version of Cadillac's Northstar DOHC V-8 with the heavy-duty 4T80-E four-speed automatic. It was the best GM had to offer in the mid-'90s. We hoped to find truth in this old maxim: GM cars run bad longer than most cars run at all.

Among the bevy of rusted-out, mangled, oil-puking entries, this 1963 Mercedes-Benz 190 sedan stood out like Jackie O. at a Star Trek convention. Purchased by a UC-Berkeley professor and used as a commuter for 40 years, Ed Adams nabbed it for $500.

Adams changed the fluids, replaced the radiator, added a race seat, and installed the mandatory roll bar. Otherwise, it’s bone stock, 43-year-old drum brakes and all. Tires? The rubber is more diversified than Kirk Kerkorian’s investment portfolio: 205/60R-13 BFGoodrich radials up front, a 175/SR-13 Goodyear C800 on the right rear, and a P185/70R-13 Big O

Euro SXP on the left. No spares. Knowing that he didn’t have the quickest ride, Adams’s strategy was simple: Only stop when you have to, and don’t hit anything. Those simple guidelines kept the Benz in the top five for more than half the race. But a swift punt from a 1986 BMW 535i punctured its radiator and required a time consuming repair.

The Mercedes didn’t win, but it did capture the “Organizer’s Choice” award and the $500 in nickels that came with it. Considering the modern cars it raced against, the 10th-place finish is a result even Dr. Z should be proud of.—Robin Warner

The $500-per-car ceiling notwithstanding, you could spend all you want on safety gear. Mandatory are a roll cage, a four-point racing harness, and a fire extinguisher. We sent our expense account and the Aurora off to Sky-Tek Engineering in Rochester Hills, Michigan, where the interior was gutted for a custom-made cage. Brakes, wheels, and tires are also considered safety equipment, so there's no spending cap there, either. With no suitable performance tires available in the Aurora's 235/60R-16 size, we order 18-inch wheels, the larger size working with sticky Goodyear Eagle F1 Supercar EMT 245/45WR-18 tires, chosen in the hope they'd wear longer than race tires. And these Eagles are run-flats, eliminating the chance of flats.

Only 10 days before the race, while I was bearing the fierce pressure of making a noon wake-up call for the Paris auto show, the Aurora was sent to our automotive friends at Washtenaw Community College back in Ann Arbor. Engine fluids were changed. (LeMons cars must run water in the radiator instead of coolant to avoid the slippery green stuff leaking onto the track.) The Olds also underwent a chassis makeover that included new brake pads and rotors, rebuilt calipers, new rear shocks, and a new control-arm bushing. A confession: The rear shocks and the control-arm bushing pushed us about $90 over budget, but we hid the newness of the shocks by spraying them with undercoating paint, and we didn't think there'd be a bushing exam—we were right. In went a five-point harness and the mandatory fire extinguisher; out went the power-window mechanisms and door glass.